TY - JOUR
T1 - How culture affects street-level bureaucrats’ bending the rules in the context of informal payments for health care
T2 - The Israeli case
AU - Cohen, Nissim
N1 - Funding Information:
The author is grateful for the comments and suggestions of the members of Permanent Study Group on Public Policy of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) on the original paper. He especially thanks Tanja Klenk (University of Kassel), Peter Hupe (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Harald Saetren (University of Bergen), and Eva Thomann (University of Heidelberg).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2016.
PY - 2018/2/1
Y1 - 2018/2/1
N2 - What is the role of culture in street-level bureaucrats’ bending the rules and accepting informal payments for health care? The literature on street-level bureaucrats stresses the importance of both individual and organizational factors in understanding how they use their discretion but usually neglects the importance of the culture in determining how far they are willing to go in exercising this discretion. Using data from 102 in-depth interviews with doctors and nurses in Israel, and by linking the literature about street-level bureaucrats to that of the research on informal payments for health care, we demonstrate that the culture plays a key role in decisions about accepting such payments. According to our findings, such payments are a phenomenon rooted in the culture and range from the extreme case of bribery to the fuzzier area of making exceptions for favored and sympathetic clients.
AB - What is the role of culture in street-level bureaucrats’ bending the rules and accepting informal payments for health care? The literature on street-level bureaucrats stresses the importance of both individual and organizational factors in understanding how they use their discretion but usually neglects the importance of the culture in determining how far they are willing to go in exercising this discretion. Using data from 102 in-depth interviews with doctors and nurses in Israel, and by linking the literature about street-level bureaucrats to that of the research on informal payments for health care, we demonstrate that the culture plays a key role in decisions about accepting such payments. According to our findings, such payments are a phenomenon rooted in the culture and range from the extreme case of bribery to the fuzzier area of making exceptions for favored and sympathetic clients.
KW - Culture
KW - Informal payments for health care
KW - Rules bending
KW - Street-level bureaucracy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048092500&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0275074016665919
DO - 10.1177/0275074016665919
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85048092500
VL - 48
SP - 175
EP - 187
JO - American Review of Public Administration
JF - American Review of Public Administration
SN - 0275-0740
IS - 2
ER -